This graffiti showed up on some walls in a local national parking lot not long before I left. I was told it is a memorial to locals who had worked for the USA and been killed.

This is a UH60 refueling. I don't recall what base this is on. They kick the passengers off while they're doing this, which is when I got this picture.

Here I am at the infamous Abu Ghraib. While in Baghdad, I ran into a friend of mine and was able to join one of his unit's convoys to this prison. This is, of course, prior to this facility being turned over to the Iraqis.

QWBC, the FOB I was on, was an old Iraqi air force base and there were some of these old, beat fighters still lying around.

This is me getting the upper hand on one of the guys in my unit. We were learning search techniques for a hand-cuffed suspect.

my new rifle

This mosque, I was told, was Saddam's personal mosque near the Al Faw palace. Now, it's located on Victory Base Complex.

A collection of rocket launchers. Hajji will often set these up, put a rocket in it, set up some sort of timer device, and then leave the area for the rocket to fire at a later time.

During training, we fired our weapons many times. Here I am getting in some practice firing three-round bursts for accuracy.

The FOB I was on was a former Iraqi Air Force base. As a result, we had a couple of these old Mig-21s laying around. The former commander of the base told me the more modern planes were buried - and then dug up for scrap by the locals.

I took this photo while flying over Baghdad. It is the Grand Mosque which Saddam was building when the invasion occurred. When finished, it was supposed to be the largest mosque in the world. I doubt it will ever be completed.

If you fly much in Iraq, then you've likely been on one of these - a C-17. They are much better to fly in than C-130s.

Here's what it looked like as we boarded the plane to fly to Iraq. I remember being both excited and nervous at the same time.

In this photo, I'm in the lower right pulling perimeter security during a short halt in training.

A McDonald's sign I saw at Ali Al Salim base in Kuwait.

Believe it or not, it does rain in Iraq, as these poor soldiers found out when they tried to move this large forklift over some muddy ground.